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Dymaxion Car

car With such a vehicle at our disposal, [Fuller] felt that human travel, like that of birds, would no longer be confined to airports, roads, and other bureaucratic boundaries, and that autonomous free-thinking human beings could live and prosper wherever they chose. Lloyd S.

[1] Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Starling Burgess – using donated money as well as a family inheritance[2][3] – to explore not an automobile per se, but the 'ground-taxiing phase' of a vehicle that might one day be designed to fly, land and drive – an "Omni-Medium Transport". Prototype One, at 20 feet (6.1 m) long,[25] was built on a hinged two-frame chassis constructed of lightweight chromoly steel with aircraft-type dished lightening holes – and powered by a Ford V8 engine producing 85 brake horsepower (63 kW; 86 PS) in a rear-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. The Dymaxion rolled over during the crash, killing its driver, a Gulf employee named Francis T. Turner, and seriously injuring its passengers: aviation pioneer (and noted spy) William Sempill and Charles Dollfuss, curator of France's first air museum.

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